SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
WINTER, 2022
VOLUME ELEVEN NUMBER ONE
RAPHAEL SAADIQ
Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:
JON BATISTE
(December 25-31)
MULGREW MILLER
(January 1- 7)
VALERIE COLEMAN
(January 8-14)
CHARNETT MOFFETT
(January 15-21)
AMYTHYST KIAH
(January 22-28)
JOHNATHAN BLAKE
(January 29--February 4)
AUDRA MCDONALD
(February 5-11)
IMMANUEL WILKINS
(February 12-18)
WYCLIFFE GORDON
(February 19-25)
FREDDIE KING
(February 26-March 4)
DOREEN KETCHENS
(March 5-11)
TERRY POLLARD
(March 12-18)
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/audra-mcdonald-mn0000048341/biography
Audra McDonald
(b. July 3, 1970)
Artist Biography by William Ruhlmann
One of the most acclaimed performers of her generation, Audra McDonald is a classically trained soprano, and multifaceted actress, whose adept skills, and artistic range have found her working across a variety of mediums, from Broadway to film, television, and in the recording studio. A marquee Broadway star since debuting in the '90s, McDonald is a six-time Tony Award-winner for her roles in Carousel, Master Class, Ragtime, A Raisin in the Sun, and Porgy and Bess. A record breaker, she has garnered the most awards by one performer, and is the first artist to win in all four performance categories. Recognized for her technical virtuosity, as well as her emotive and charismatic stage presence, she has earned other plaudits, including earning two Grammy Awards for her work on the 2009 cast recording of Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, and receiving a 2015 National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama. Away from the stage, she has issued her own studio albums including 1998's Way Back to Paradise, in which she highlighted the work of young theater composers. Other albums, like the aptly titled Happy Songs and 2013's Go Back Home, have found her exploring her favorite theater and American Popular Standards. On screen, she is also widely known for her role as Dr. Naomi Bennett on ABC's Private Practice, as well as her roles in such films as 1999's Cradle Will Rock, and Disney's live-action 2017 version of Beauty and the Beast, for which she earned one of her five NAACP Image Award nominations.
Born in Berlin, Germany in 1970, where her father was stationed in the Army, McDonald was raised in Fresno, California. Interested in musical theater from a young age, she gained early training attending the Roosevelt School of the Arts program at Theodore Roosevelt High School. During her teens, she also acted, appearing in productions by Fresno's Good Company Players. After high school, she honed her craft studying at the Juilliard School of Music where she graduated with a Bachelor's degree in music in 1993. Even before her graduation, she had begun to work professionally in the musical theater, taking a role in the national tour of the musical The Secret Garden in 1992. Fresh out of school, she was cast in a Broadway revival of the musical Carousel (1994). She appeared on the cast album and won a 1994 Tony Award for her performance. Two years later, she took home a second Tony for her portrayal of singing student Maria Callas in the play Master Class (1995). She then joined the cast of the new musical Ragtime in its premiere production in Toronto. After making her feature film debut in Seven Servants in 1996, she returned to Ragtime when it opened on Broadway on January 18, 1998, winning her third Tony in five years. She was featured on both the initial studio cast album of the show and on the original Broadway cast album.
McDonald signed a solo recording contract with Nonesuch Records and released her debut album, Way Back to Paradise, on September 22, 1998. On it, she sang songs by young theater composers, among them Michael John LaChiusa, in whose musical Marie Christine she planned to appear. She made her nightclub debut in New York in October 1998 to promote the album, beginning an extensive career as a concert performer. The same year, she appeared in the film The Object of My Affection and in a regional production of John Adams' I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, that produced a cast album. In 1999, she appeared in the film The Cradle Will Rock, based on the Marc Blitzstein musical, and in the TV movie version of the musical Annie, and she was on soundtrack albums for both. She also acted in the TV movie Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First Hundred Years and sang on a studio cast album of Wonderful Town. Then came Marie Christine (December, 1999), her third Broadway musical.
Her second solo album, How Glory Goes, featuring a mixture of show music standards and more new theater songs, was released in February 2000, and the Marie Christine cast recording followed within months. Also in 2000, she appeared in a benefit performance of the Stephen Sondheim musical Sweeney Todd with the New York Philharmonic that was recorded for a cast album, and she was in another TV movie, The Last Debate. She also found time to marry bass player Peter Donovan, with whom she had a daughter. In 2001, there was a TV movie of the Broadway play Wit and a benefit performance of the musical Dreamgirls (2001) that was recorded for an album.
McDonald's third solo album, Happy Songs, was released in September 2002. It found her revisiting standards associated with female pop singers of the interwar era, such as Ethel Waters and Judy Garland. In 2003, she appeared in the feature film It Runs in the Family and the TV movie Partners and Crimes; was a regular on the TV series Mister Sterling; and returned to Broadway in a production of Shakespeare's Henry IV . The next year brought another film, The Best Thief in the World, and a featured role in a Broadway revival of the drama A Raisin in the Sun that earned her her fourth Tony Award.
In 2005, she took a part in a staged concert version of Stephen Sondheim's Passion that was broadcast live on PBS. She became a regular on the TV series The Bedford Diaries in 2006. That same year, she released her fourth solo album, Build a Bridge. It featured songs by rock-era writers like Randy Newman, Laura Nyro, and Burt Bacharach. Around the same time, she returned to Broadway in a revival of the musical 110 in the Shade. She followed-up on stage with a 2012 Broadway revival of Porgy and Bess, and returned to her solo work in 2013 with Go Back Home, which featured a title track culled from the Kander & Ebb musical The Scottsboro Boys. In support of the album, she also filmed a PBS concert special recorded live at Lincoln Center. Also in 2013, she appeared as Mother Abbess in NBC's live televised production The Sound of Music Live!
A year later, she starred as Billie Holiday in the Broadway production of Lanie Robertson's play Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill. The play was eventually filmed and broadcast on HBO, for which McDonald earned a 2016 Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie. In 2018, she delivered Sing Happy, a live album recorded at New York's David Geffen Hall with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audra_McDonald
Audra McDonald
McDonald at the 74th Tony Awards in 2021 Audra Ann McDonald[1] (born July 3, 1970)[2] is an American actress and singer. Primarily known for her work on the Broadway stage, she has won six Tony Awards, more performance wins than any other actor, and is the only person to win all four acting categories.[note 1] She has performed in musicals, operas, and dramas such as A Moon for the Misbegotten, 110 in the Shade, Carousel, Ragtime, Master Class and Porgy and Bess.
As a classical soprano, she has performed in staged operas with the Houston Grand Opera and the Los Angeles Opera and in concerts with symphony orchestras like the Berlin Philharmonic and New York Philharmonic. In 2008 her recording of Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny with the Los Angeles Opera won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Album and the Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording. She has a close working relationship with composer Michael John LaChiusa who has written several works for her, including the Broadway musical Marie Christine, the opera Send (who are you? i love you), and The Seven Deadly Sins: A Song Cycle. With her full lyric soprano voice,[3] she maintains an active concert and recording career throughout the United States performing a wide repertoire from classical to musical theater to jazz and popular songs. In 2016, McDonald was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama. In 2017 she was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.[4]
On television, McDonald portrayed Dr. Naomi Bennett as a main cast member of Shonda Rhimes's ABC television drama Private Practice from 2007 to 2011. She also portrayed the character of Liz Lawrence in Season 4 of The Good Wife, a role that she reprises as a main cast member in the spinoff series The Good Fight, she received two Critics Choice Award nomination for her performance. In 2013 she performed the role of Mother Superior in The Sound of Music Live! opposite Carrie Underwood as Maria. She has twice been nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for her portrayals of Susie Monahan in Wit opposite Emma Thompson in 2001 and for her performance of Ruth Younger in A Raisin in the Sun in 2008. In 2016 she was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie and a Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill for HBO in which McDonald portrayed jazz legend Billie Holiday. She won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Class Program in 2015 for her work hosting the program Live from Lincoln Center.
On film, McDonald is best known for her portrayals of Maureen in Ricki and the Flash (2015), Madame de Garderobe in Disney's Beauty and the Beast (2017), and Barbara Siggers Franklin in Respect (2021). She has been nominated seven times for the NAACP Image Awards for her work in television and film.
Early life and education
McDonald was born in West Berlin, Germany, the daughter of American parents, Anna Kathryn (Jones), a university administrator, and Stanley James McDonald Jr., a high school principal.[1][5] At the time of her birth, her father was stationed with the United States Army. McDonald was raised in her father's native Fresno, California, the elder of two daughters; her sister, Alison, writes and directs for television and film. McDonald graduated from the Roosevelt School of the Arts program within Theodore Roosevelt High School in Fresno.[6] She got her start in acting with Dan Pessano and Roger Rocka's Good Company Players, beginning in their junior company. In a feature article about her written when she was a child, she said that she knew she wanted to be involved in theater "when I had my first chance to perform with the Good Company Players Junior Company." She also said that the people who have had the most impact on her life are "Good Company director Dan Pessano and my mother."[7] She studied classical voice as an undergraduate under Ellen Faull at the Juilliard School,[8] graduating in 1993.[9]
Career
Theatre
McDonald was a three-time Tony Award winner by age 28 for her performances in Carousel, Master Class, and Ragtime, placing her alongside Shirley Booth, Gwen Verdon and Zero Mostel by accomplishing this feat within five years. She was nominated for another Tony Award for her performance in Marie Christine before she won her fourth in 2004 for her role in A Raisin in the Sun, placing her in the company of then four-time winning actress Angela Lansbury. She reprised her Raisin role for a 2008 television adaptation, earning her a second Emmy Award nomination. On June 10, 2012, McDonald scored her fifth Tony Award win for her portrayal of Bess in Broadway's The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, thus tying Angela Lansbury and Julie Harris.[10] Her 2014 performance as Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill earned McDonald her sixth Tony award and made her the first person to win all four acting categories.
McDonald appeared as Lizzie in the Roundabout Theatre Company's 2007 revival of 110 in the Shade, directed by Lonny Price at Studio 54, for which she shared the Drama Desk Award for Best Actress in a Musical with Donna Murphy.[11] On April 29, 2007, while she was in previews for the show, her father was killed when an experimental aircraft he was flying crashed north of Sacramento, California.[12]
McDonald is known for defying racial typecasting in her various Tony Award-winning and -nominated roles. Her performances as Carrie Pipperidge in Nicholas Hytner's 1994 revival of Carousel and Lizzie Curry in Lonny Price's 2007 revival of 110 in the Shade made her the first black woman to portray those (traditionally white) roles in a major Broadway production. Of her groundbreaking work in encouraging diversity in musical theatre casting, she said in an interview for The New York Times, "I refuse to be stereotyped. If I think I am right for a role I will go for it in whatever way I can. I refuse to say no to myself. I can't control what a producer will do or say but I can at least put myself out there."[13] In a Talk of the Nation interview on NPR, Asian-American actor Thom Sesma said McDonald's performance in Carousel "transcended any kind of type at all", proving her to be "more actress than African-American."[14]
McDonald is also no stranger to the opera stage. In 2006 she made her opera debut at the Houston Grand Opera performing Francis Poulenc's La Voix humaine and the world premiere of Michael John LaChiusa's one-woman opera Send (who are you? I love you).[15] She had previously performed in the world premiere of John Adams' I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky which was given in concert, and can be heard on the 1997 recording of the opera. In 2007 she performed the role of Jenny Smith in Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at the Los Angeles Opera.[16] Her performance was recorded and won the Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording in 2009. She appeared in a revised version of George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess, at the American Repertory Theatre (in Cambridge, Massachusetts) from August through September 2011, and recreated the role on Broadway at the Richard Rodgers Theatre, which opened on January 12, 2012 and closed on September 23, 2012.[17] For this role, McDonald won her fifth Tony Award and her first in a Leading Actress category.[18] This American Repertory Theater production was "re-imagined by Suzan-Lori Parks and Diedre Murray as a musical for contemporary audiences."[19]
In 2014, she was featured in Lynn Nottage's short play Poof!, alongside Tonya Pinkins. It was produced for radio and podcast by Playing On Air.[20]
She appeared at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, Williamstown, Massachusetts, in Eugene O'Neill's play A Moon for the Misbegotten in August 2015, co-starring with her husband Will Swenson.[21]
In 2016, McDonald starred on Broadway as the vaudeville performer Lottie Gee in a new musical titled Shuffle Along, or, the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed about the making of the 1921 musical Shuffle Along.[22] Shuffle Along closed on July 24, 2016 and McDonald began a maternity hiatus at that time.[23][24] In 2019 McDonald played as Frankie in Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune at the Broadhurst Theatre,[25] earning her ninth Tony Award nomination for her performance for Best Actress in a Play.[26]
Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill
McDonald played Billie Holiday on Broadway in the play Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill in a limited engagement that ended on August 10, 2014.[27] After previews that began on March 25, 2014, the play opened at the Circle in the Square Theatre on April 13, 2014.[27] Of the play, McDonald said in an interview:
It's about a woman trying to get through a concert performance, which I know something about, and she's doing it at a time when her liver was pickled and she was still doing heroin regularly...I might have been a little judgmental about Billie Holiday early on in my life, but what I've come to admire most about her – and what is fascinating in this show – is that there is never any self-pity. She's almost laughing at how horrible her life has been. I don't think she sees herself as a victim. And she feels an incredible connection to her music – she can't sing a song if she doesn't have some emotional connection to it, which I really understand.[27]
McDonald won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for this role, making her the first person to earn six Tony Award wins for acting (not counting honorary awards) and the first person to win a Tony Award in all four acting categories.[28] In her acceptance speech, "she thanked her parents for encouraging her to pursue her interests as a child."[29] She also thanked the "strong and brave and courageous" African-American women who came before her, saying in part, "I am standing on Lena Horne's shoulders. I am standing on Maya Angelou's shoulders. I am standing on Diahann Carroll and Ruby Dee, and most of all, Billie Holiday. You deserved so much more than you were given when you were on this planet. This is for you, Billie."[30] This performance was filmed at Cafe Brasil in New Orleans and broadcast on HBO on March 12, 2016.[31] McDonald received a 2016 Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for her role in the broadcast.[32]
McDonald had planned to make her West End debut as Holiday in Lady Day in June through September 2016,[33] but after becoming pregnant she postponed these plans.[34] She performed in Lady Day in June 2017 through September 9, 2017, at the Wyndham's Theatre in the West End.[35]
Recordings and concerts
McDonald has maintained ties to her classical training and repertoire. She frequently performs in concert throughout the U.S.[36] and has performed with musical organizations such as the New York Philharmonic and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Carnegie Hall commissioned the song cycle The Seven Deadly Sins: A Song Cycle for McDonald, and she performed it at Carnegie's Zankel Hall on June 2, 2004.[37] She sang two solo one-act operas at the Houston Grand Opera in March 2006: Francis Poulenc's La voix humaine and the world premiere of Michael John LaChiusa's Send (who are you? I love you).[38] On February 10, 2007, McDonald starred with Patti LuPone in the Los Angeles Opera production of Kurt Weill's opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny directed by John Doyle.[39] The recording of this production of Mahagonny won two Grammy Awards, for Best Opera Recording and Best Classical Album in February 2009.[40]
In September 2008, American composer Michael John LaChiusa was quoted in Opera News Online, as working on an adaptation of Bizet's Carmen with McDonald in mind.[41]
McDonald has recorded five solo albums for Nonesuch Records. Her first, the 1998 Way Back to Paradise, featured songs written by a new generation of musical theatre composers who had achieved varying degrees of prominence in the 1990s, particularly LaChiusa, Adam Guettel and Jason Robert Brown.
Her next album, How Glory Goes (2000), combined both old and new works, and included composers Harold Arlen, Leonard Bernstein and Jerome Kern.[8] Her third album, Happy Songs (2002), was big band music from the 1920s through the 1940s.[42] Her fourth album, Build a Bridge (2006), features songs from jazz and pop.[43]
In May 2013, Audra McDonald released her first solo album in seven years, Go Back Home, with a title track from the Kander & Ebb musical The Scottsboro Boys. To coincide with the album's release, McDonald performed a concert at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City that aired on the PBS series Live from Lincoln Center titled Audra McDonald In Concert: Go Back Home.[44]
At the 2010 BCS National Championship Game on January 7, McDonald sang America the Beautiful for the sold-out stadium fans to celebrate the final game of the college football season.[45]
In May 2000, Audra McDonald appeared as "The Beggar Woman" in Lonny Price's concert version of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, performed at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center, New York, with the New York Philharmonic with George Hearn and Patti LuPone. She reprised the role in some performances of the March 2014 Lincoln Center concert production, again directed by Price, this time opposite Bryn Terfel and Emma Thompson. She performed three concerts, titled "Audra McDonald Sings Broadway", in the Sydney Opera House in November 2015, which also included "The Facebook Song" by Kate Miller-Heidke.[46]
Television and film
McDonald has also made many television and film appearances, both musical and dramatic. In 1996 she made her film acting debut in Seven Servants by Daryush Shokof.[47] After being cast in The Object of My Affection and Cradle Will Rock, in 1999 she has appeared on television serie Homicide: Life on the Street, in television remake of Annie as Daddy Warbucks' secretary & soon-to-be wife, Miss Farrell and in television movie Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters' First 100 Years. In 2000 McDonald acted in two episodes of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and in television movie The Last Debate.In 2001, she received her first Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie for the HBO film Wit, starring Emma Thompson and directed by Mike Nichols.[48]
In 2003 McDonald starred as Sarah Langley in It Runs in the Family,[49] and as Jackie Brock in nine episodes of short-lived Mister Sterling.[50] From 2005 to 2006 she acted in several television series and films, such as The Bedford Diaries and Kidnapped, while from 2007 to 2013 she played Dr. Naomi Bennett in Private Practice, a spinoff of Grey's Anatomy, replacing Merrin Dungey, who played the role in the series pilot.[51][52] She sang with the New York Philharmonic in the annual New Year's Eve gala concert on December 31, 2006, featuring music from the movies; it was televised on Live from Lincoln Center by PBS.[53]
In 2008 McDonald starred as Ruth Younger in critical acclaimed television movie A Raisin in the Sun,[54] being nominated at the 60th Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie,[55] and at the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Television Movie.[56] Since 2012, McDonald has served as host for the PBS series Live from Lincoln Center,[57] for which she won an Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Class Program with the show's producers for Sweeney Todd, aired in 2015.[58] In 2013, McDonald appeared in the HBO documentary Six by Sondheim,[59] and she played Mother Abbess in the 2013 NBC live television production of The Sound of Music Live!.[60][61]
After severals television and film appearance, including as Maureen in Ricki and the Flash, in 2016 McDonald starred as Billie Holiday in filmed stage production Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill,[62] receiving price from the critics, earning nominations at the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie and an at the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series.[63][64] In 2017 McDonald starred in Walt Disney Pictures motion picture Beauty and the Beast as Madame de Garderobe, earning a nomination at the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture.[65] On August 1, 2017, it was announced that she had been added to the main cast for the second season of The Good Fight, reprising her role as Liz Lawrence from The Good Wife season 4.[66] McDonald joyned the cast for the next seasons, being nominated two times for at the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama Series.[67]
In 2020 McDonald acted as Rachel Boutella in television serie The Bite and hosted the television ceremony of the 74th Tony Awards.[68][69] In 2021 she was cast as Barbara Siggers Franklin in Aretha Franklin's biographical musical drama film Respect, earning a nomination at the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture.[70] In 2022 she starred as Dorothy Scott in HBO television serie's The Gilded Age.[71]
Personal life
McDonald married bassist Peter Donovan in September 2000.[8] They have one daughter, Zoe Madeline Donovan, named after McDonald's close friend and Master Class co-star Zoe Caldwell and the late Madeline Kahn. McDonald became close friends with Kahn after they filmed a TV pilot together, and she found out she was carrying a girl the same day she sang at Kahn's memorial.[72] McDonald and Donovan divorced in 2009.[73]
She married Will Swenson on October 6, 2012.[74] On October 19, 2016, they became parents to a girl, Sally James McDonald-Swenson.[75] She also has two stepsons.[76]
McDonald attended Joan Rivers' funeral in New York on September 7, 2014, where she sang "Smile".
McDonald and family live in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.[77]
Activism and charitable work
In October 2020, McDonald joined many other Broadway stars in a virtual voter education and letter-writing party sponsored by VoteRiders to raise awareness about voter ID requirements.[78]
In June 2020, McDonald and a coalition of professionals from across the theatre industry launched Black Theatre United, an organization whose mission is to inspire reform and combat systemic racism within the theatre community and throughout the nation. Emphasizing four goals – awareness, accountability, advocacy, and action – BTU works at the community and national levels to elevate anti-racist causes and support the Black community through various resources and initiatives.[79]
McDonald joined other Broadway stars including Lin-Manuel Miranda, Josh Groban, Idina Menzel, Laura Benanti, and Kristin Chenoweth in 2018 to record Singing You Home, a bilingual children's album designed to benefit organizations that aid families separated at the border.[80]
She joined the Covenant House board of Directors in 2014. Covenant House oversees programs for homeless youth in 27 cities in six countries across the United States, Canada, and Latin America. Audra was the recipient of their 2018 Beacon of Hope Award.[81]
Discography
Solo recordings
- Way Back to Paradise (Nonesuch, 1998)[82]
- How Glory Goes (2000)[83]
- Happy Songs (2002)
- Build a Bridge (2006)
- Go Back Home (2013)
- Sing Happy (2018)
Source:[84]
Featured recordings
- Dawn Upshaw Sings Rodgers & Hart – duet on "Why Can't I?" (1996)
- Leonard Bernstein's New York – duet with Mandy Patinkin on "A Little Bit in Love" and "Tonight" (1996)
- George and Ira Gershwin: Standards and Gems – sings "How Long Has This Been Going On?" (1998)
- George Gershwin: The 100th Birthday Celebration – sings Porgy and Bess selections (1998)
- Myths and Hymns – sings "Pegasus" (1999)
- My Favorite Broadway: The Leading Ladies – sings "The Webber Love Trio" (1999)
- Broadway In Love – sings "You Were Meant For Me" from The Object of My Affection (2000)
- Broadway Cares: Home for the Holidays – sings "White Christmas" (2001)
- Bright Eyed Joy: The Songs Of Ricky Ian Gordon – sings "Daybreak in Alabama" (2001)
- Zeitgeist – sings "Think Twice" (2005)
- The Wonder of Christmas with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (2004)[85]
- Barbara Cook at the Met – sings "When Did I Fall In Love?" and "Blue Skies" (2006)
- Jule Styne in Hollywood – sings "10,432 Sheep" (2006)[86]
- Sondheim: The Birthday Concert – sings "Too Many Mornings" and "The Glamorous Life" (2010)
- Stages – duet on "If I Loved You", 2014
Source:[87]
Cast recordings
- Carousel (1994 Broadway Revival Cast Recording) (1994)
- Ragtime (Original Cast Recording) (1998)
- I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky by John Adams (Studio Cast Recording) (1998)[88]
- Wonderful Town (Berlin Cast Recording) (1999)
- Marie Christine (Original Cast Recording) (1999)
- Sweeney Todd Live at the New York Philharmonic (2000)
- Dreamgirls in Concert (2001 Concert Cast Recording) (released February 2002)[89]
- Wonderful Town (Studio Recording) (2005)
- 110 in the Shade (2007 Broadway Revival Cast Recording) (2007)
- Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (Concert Cast Recording) (2007)
- Rodgers & Hammerstein's Allegro (First Complete Recording) (2009)[90]
- The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess (New Broadway Cast Recording) (2012)[91]
- Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill (Original Broadway Cast Recording) (2014)[92]
Video recordings
- Audra McDonald – Live at the Donmar London, VHS (1999)
- My Favorite Broadway: The Leading Ladies ("The Webber Love Trio"), DVD & CD (1999)
- Bernstein – Wonderful Town with Kim Criswell, Thomas Hampson, Wayne Marshall, Simon Rattle, and Berlin Philharmonic, DVD (2005)
- The Wonder of Christmas with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square, DVD (2005)
- Weill – Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, DVD (2007)
- Sondheim! The Birthday Concert, Blu-ray DVD (2010)
Audio books
- Alice Walker, By The Light of My Father's Smile (1998)
- Connie Briscoe, A Long Way From Home (1999)
- Rita Dove, Second-Hand Man (2003)[93]
- Jodi Picoult, Small Great Things (2016)
Audra McDonald in Concert (2013–14)
23 concerts total; the gap between May and October 2013 is due to McDonald's work with television and her album coming out, causing the three and a half month gap. The tour ended due to McDonald's show, Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill opening on Broadway, but she picked up again with a new tour once the show closed.
An Evening with Audra McDonald (2014–15)
37 concerts; this tour marked her Australian debut. The lack of August shows was due to her run in A Moon for the Misbegotten.
Other concerts
- 1999 – Audra McDonald: Live at the Donmar London (filmed for a DVD)
- February, 2002, Live with the Utah Symphony Abravenal Hall Salt Lake City, UT (part of the 2002 Olympics Arts Festival)
- June 2, 2004 – The Seven Deadly Sins: A Song Cycle at Carnegie Hall
- August 26, 2007 – Ravinia Festival
- March 28, 2008 – Savannah Music Festival
- March 30, 2008 – Ferst Center for the Arts
- April 26, 2008 – Stanley Theater
- May 30, 2008 – Zellerbach Hall
- February 1, 2010 – Ralph Freud Playhouse
- April 26, 2010 – Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall
- July 18, 2010 – Ozawa Hall in Boston
- October 22, 2011 – Carnegie Hall
- November 8, 2011 – Curtis M Phillips Center for Performing Arts
- April 20, 2012 – New Jersey Performing Arts Center
- January 2, 2016 – Parker Playhouse
- January 17, 2016 – Leicester Square Theatre
- November 17, 2018 – Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, MI
- October 7–8, 2019 – Noorda Center for Performing Art at Utah Valley University, Orem, UT
Honors and achievements
In 2012, Audra McDonald received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member General Colin Powell.[99][100]
On September 22, 2016, Audra McDonald was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama for 2015. The Award states, in part: "for lighting up Broadway as one of its brightest stars.... In musicals, concerts, operas, and the recording studio, her rich, soulful voice continues to take her audiences to new heights."[101]
In 2017 she was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.[4]
Explanatory notes
- Best Actress in a Play, Best Actress in a Musical, Best Featured Actress in a Play, and Best Featured Actress in a Musical. "Tony Awards Facts & Trivia". Archived from the original on July 4, 2015. Retrieved June 9, 2014.
External links
 |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Audra McDonald. |
- Audra McDonald at IMG Artists
- Audra McDonald Biography and Interview on American Academy of Achievement
- Audra McDonald at the Internet Broadway Database
- Audra McDonald at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
- Audra McDonald at IMDb
- Audra McDonald at PlaybillVault
- Audra McDonald at Nonesuch Records
- Audra McDonald – Downstage Center interview at American Theatre Wing.org
- Audra McDonald's February 5, 2007 interview on the Tavis Smiley Show (TV Interview)
- Audra McDonald: Shaping 'Bess' On Broadway, interview on Fresh Air (29 mins, 2012)
http://www.compulsivereader.com/2013/12/24/theatricality-and-truth-audra-mcdonald-go-back-home/
Theatricality and Truth: Audra McDonald, Go Back Home
Reviewed by Daniel Garrett
Audra McDonald, Go Back Home
Andy Einhorn, Music Director
Doug Petty, Producer
Nonesuch, 2013
Audra McDonald has a large voice, at once plainly American, theatrical and expressive; and in the title song “Go Back Home,” about opportunity, fate, and the return home, it is hard to distinguish between the artifice and the felt. With voice and orchestra, and Audra McDonald’s theatrical voice the composition is large, glossy, self-dramatizing. (The song, surprisingly, is from The Scottsboro Boys.) In “The Glamorous Life” the different expectations of generations—mother and daughter and possibly grandmother—are explored: the drudgery of housework and mothering and the lack of recognition is contrasted with the traveling theatrical life; a recitation with occasional high notes. It contains Sondheim’s customary capturing of the cruel contradictions of modern life , of differing roles (he invests truth in theater). McDonald’s voice is compelled to embrace and embody something more significant than appearance—even while discussing the power of different appearances.
“Baltimore” is a detailed comic song on the advice of parents, its use and limits; a song about the lack of preparation for bad boys, for the wrong man, to be found in Baltimore, Maryland. It is a satirical account of the psychology in youthful relationships, with comically detailed lyrics bewailing Baltimore boys. “First You Dream” is a big ballad of hopeful speculation, with lyrics about nature and yearning; and with orchestral heft and a McDonald’s soaring voice. Dreaming is the guide in the exuberant song. “Tavern,” based on an Edna St. Vincent Millay poem, with themes of memory and refuge and praise for helpful people, features a beautiful voice that seems more suited to artificial scenes than the real world; the melancholy in the lyrics do not reach the heart.
On Audra McDonald’s Go Back Home, Adam Guettel’s “Migratory V” has exultant, pretty tones, with lyrics that suggest a large perspective, with glimpses of nature and spirituality. What is the source of the dramatized feeling in the person? Men see women differently after sex, the lyrics of “Virtue” note: men change the state of women then judge the state. It is a short reflective commentary. Female morality is judged differently (loving or cruel), depending on whether or not a man benefits from her choices. Both “Virtue” and “Married Love,” composed by Michael John LaChiusa, were inspired by the written observations of actress-singer Marlene Dietrich. “Married Love,” on the practicalities of maintaining a relationship, makes a distinction between brain and heart, between men and women, saying men are simpler than women—and women must act simpler to maintain the relationship. Some of the lines are given a bluesy reading, comic and gritty. Nice varied tone, including reflective recitation. The reflective becomes raucous. In “I’ll Be Here” an accidental meeting becomes flirtatious then lasting; it is a story-song about relationship and marriage in contemporary New York, a relationship ended by a public disaster, with grief comforted by joyful memory and a sensed approval. There is a new love discovered and accepted at the end of the song. An acknowledged variety of days, up and down, “Some Days” is sung in a sensitive tone of voice. It has a text by James Baldwin, one of his poems. The references are general enough—about experience, belief, compassion; and the singer reads it as something to do with equality. “Edelweiss,” from The Sound of Music, is a ballad-homage to home, with a prominent string instrument (violin?). “Make Someone Happy” lacks the persuasive intimacy of Streisand’s interpretation, though it is not bad: it sounds like the advice of one performer to another—yet, rather than mere advice and testimony, it could sound more like personal experience.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Daniel Garrett, a graduate of the New School for Social Research, and the principal organizer of the Cultural Politics Discussion Group at Poets House, is a writer whose work has appeared in The African, All About Jazz, American Book Review, Art & Antiques, The Audubon Activist, Black Film Review, Changing Men, Cinetext, Contact II, Film International, The Humanist, Hyphen, Illuminations, Muse Apprentice Guild, Option, Pop Matters, Quarterly Black Review of Books, Rain Taxi, Red River Review, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Wax Poetics, and World Literature Today. Daniel Garrett has written extensively about international film for Offscreen, and comprehensive commentary on music for The Compulsive Reader.
“Theatre Can’t Miss This Moment”:
An Interview with Audra McDonald
Audra McDonald came out of Juilliard in 1993, a twenty-two-year-old with a lyric soprano as pristine as sterling silver, and quickly forged one of the most celebrated careers in Broadway history. A year out of school, she was cast as Carrie Pipperidge in a Lincoln Center revival of “Carousel,” in what was hailed as a breakthrough in “color-blind casting,” and won her first Tony Award for the role. More Tonys followed, for “Master Class,” “Ragtime,” and “A Raisin in the Sun.” And then more, for “Porgy and Bess” and “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill,” in which she played a broken Billie Holiday. She remains the only performer ever to win six Tonys and the only one to win in all four available categories.
McDonald’s plan for this summer was to play Blanche DuBois in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” but, like all live theatre, the production was derailed by the pandemic. Instead, she’s been quarantined at her home in Westchester, with her husband, Will Swenson (her co-star in a 2007 production of “110 in the Shade”), their four children (three from previous marriages and a toddler, Sally), plus their eleven-year-old dog and “about five hundred frogs on the outside,” McDonald said recently. Nevertheless, she has not been idle. In April, she appeared, along with Meryl Streep and Christine Baranski, in a memorable rendition of “The Ladies Who Lunch,” as part of an online concert for Stephen Sondheim’s ninetieth birthday. This month, she performed a virtual concert from a space off her garage which she calls the “Chill Room.”
And then there’s the racial reckoning that has spilled over from the Black Lives Matter protests into the theatre world. In June, McDonald co-founded Black Theatre United, along with performers such as Phylicia Rashad, Wendell Pierce, and Billy Porter. At its inaugural town hall, McDonald moderated a conversation with Sherrilyn Ifill, of the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund. When I reached McDonald by Zoom, she was in her teen stepson’s bedroom; the “Chill Room” was undergoing an emergency chimney repair, and Sally could be heard singing in the hallway. “As much as we try to stay energetic for her, we just can’t replicate a three-year-old’s energy,” McDonald said. “Although we did just find some caterpillars in our garden, and we’re going to watch them turn into butterflies.” Our conversation—about her own metamorphoses, from a demoralized student at Juilliard, where she survived a suicide attempt, to a Broadway eminence to a community advocate—has been edited and condensed.
The theatre, like many industries, has been thrust into a big, belated moment of racial reckoning. As one of the most prominent, if not the most prominent, Black theatre artists in America, how have you been thinking about what your role should be?
You need to do what you can to make more space. Every time that we are able to get into the room, I think it’s your job to create more space. I can’t tell you how many young African-American women, students or whatnot, come up to me and say, “I watched you as a kid, and I remember thinking, If she’s doing Broadway, then I can do it. And I can do it as a soprano. I don’t have to do it in the way that society would mainly see me—a sassy beltress.”
Did you have people like that growing up?
For me, Lena Horne and Diahann Carroll, of course. Ella Fitzgerald. Obviously, she never did Broadway, but that was Ella’s voice. That was no one else’s voice except Ella’s. And, then, Lillias White I just adored. I had the album of “The Wiz,” which I listened to over and over again. I never thought that I would have the career that I ended up having, but I could at least be there. There was at least space to be taken up by Black women.
I’ve always used my voice to call attention to issues that I thought were important. I’ve been on the board of Covenant House for four or five years now, doing work with homeless youth, trying to give them shelter and education and food and dignity. With Black Theatre United, it’s about all of us saying, “We can’t sit on the sidelines. We can lament everything going on, but how can we as a group effect change in some grander way than just on our own?” As Sherrilyn Ifill said in that town hall, “Everybody has to use the tools in your hand.”
So much of the conversation has been about institutional change. What does that look like to you?
When you look at Broadway or theatre in general, it may look, like, “Well, there was a Black person in that ensemble” or “someone was playing the Black best friend” or “you just had ‘Tina’ on Broadway.” But, a lot of times when you go backstage, there’s no color in the I.A.T.S.E., in the wardrobe union, the hair-and-makeup union, the stage managers. People in casting—I can’t think of a single person of color. Maybe I’m wrong, but the fact that I can’t get one to come to my head is a problem.
There are so few directors of color. When you run into issues with the way a script is being dealt with or with people who aren’t being seen for certain roles, a lot of the trouble would be solved if you had other people of color in the room saying, “Well, this is why you’re getting blowback right now,” or “Just open your mind to this,” or “Why are we not telling more of these people’s—our people’s—stories?” You have no one in the room thinking about that, because they can have the privilege to not have to think about that, especially when a large percentage of the audience is white as well. It’s just a white landscape.
The playwright Jeremy O. Harris tweeted that the most Tony Award-winning actor and the only living playwright with two Pulitzer Prizes—meaning you and Lynn Nottage—are both Black women, but you can’t say that of any of the major artistic directors in New York City.
Exactly. Artistic directors, producers. That should not be the case. Honestly, this feels like real change now. There are going to be too many people watching and too many people demanding that things look different. I’m seeing it in regional theatres in Utah that are putting out statements. And we have this generation, Gen Z, that is very aware of where they put their money, and they can get behind a cause or call out specific organizations or shows and bring a lot of unwanted attention in a very quick and powerful way. Theatre can’t miss this moment. Theatre will be left in the dust, I think, if we don’t make substantive changes.
In an alternate universe, you’d be playing Blanche DuBois right now in Williamstown. Has any of this made you feel differently about how you want to use your own presence onstage, your own choice of projects?
I’ve always chosen my projects with a great amount of integrity. I played a Black woman who was killed by police brutality in “Ragtime.” I’ve done “A Raisin in the Sun,” by one of the greatest Black female playwrights the theatre has known. And I played Billie Holiday—it’s terrible what happened to her. It was a terrible, slow car wreck. And there are things that I have fought for and things that I continue to fight for. I’m thinking of the role that I’m playing on “The Good Fight” right now. That was chosen very specifically, and they have writers of color on their staff. When things come down the pike that don’t feel right or are not explored in a way that feels authentic to Black people, Black women, we speak up. Delroy Lindo, myself, Nyambi Nyambi, Michael Boatman, Cush Jumbo, all of us.
In fact, the reason I chose to do this specific production of “Streetcar” is because Robert O’Hara is directing it. So this is a Black man directing this iconic piece of theatre and doing something quite revolutionary with it. Again, he’s clearing space. So I’m not going to change a thing about the way I have been choosing my projects, because I’ve always done it that way. And I was taught that by my parents.
In what way?
When I was young, I wanted to audition at my dinner theatre to play the “Negro servant” in “The Miracle Worker.” I was cast in the part, and my parents said, “Absolutely not.” I remember being so upset, and they said, “You’ll understand someday. You do not need to perpetuate that stereotype. There are other things you can do.” I was taught that lesson at, like, nine. And I can look back at my entire career and say that lesson has stayed with me the entire time.
Didn’t you play Evita when you were sixteen?
Yeah, at my dinner theatre. And that was in Fresno, California. Let me tell you something about Fresno, California: Devin Nunes represents it now. So there you go. And this was back in 1986, when I played that part. It was considered a scandal for me to do it. I was double cast, because it’s a hard role and I was still in high school, and people would call the box office and say, “Is the Black one or the white one on tonight?”
You were obsessed with Broadway as a child. Why did you end up studying classical voice at Juilliard?
I didn’t do my homework. I didn’t really study the curriculum for a Juilliard student in the voice department. I thought, my voice is my strongest suit—I’ll just audition as a singer. I had to audition with a Mozart aria, a Samuel Barber aria. I had to sing in a couple different languages. And so I should have known. Come on, Audra! It should have been your first clue! And they accepted me. I was shocked. I thought, You don’t say no to Juilliard—you go. I can be in New York, and I’ll be able to take acting lessons and dance lessons. I didn’t realize that all I would be allowed to study would be classical voice.
Was that the main reason why your experience there turned so nightmarish?
Yes. This is a glib way of describing it, but, if you love cake, but a cake is in another building, you don’t see it or touch it—so it doesn’t torture you as it would if it were in the room with you, and everybody else is eating, and you can’t have any. That’s what it felt like for me to be in New York, at Juilliard, living on Broadway, seeing Patti LuPone across the street in “Anything Goes.” It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted, and here I am, in this little bubble, being told, “No, you can’t have it.”
It was as if I was in the film “Get Out.” I’ve gone into the Sunken Place. I see it all, and I cannot get to it. But I don’t blame Juilliard. That was their program.
To have a student who attempts suicide is a major deal. Looking back, do you feel, since we’ve been talking about institutional change, that there was some institutional support that you needed that you weren’t getting?
Once the suicide attempt happened, there was incredible support in terms of my mental health. They had a therapist in the school who you could speak with. They got me to a hospital, and then were a part of keeping me in that hospital for a month, until I could get to a place where I wasn’t going to hurt myself anymore. And then they let me take a leave of absence. They had all the support structures in place for the breakdown. And then, when I ended up coming back to school, getting this opportunity to audition for “The Secret Garden,” and then landing the part, the school said, “You go do that. We’ll hold your place here so you can come back.”
You went on to have a major career on Broadway, and won three Tonys by the time you were twenty-eight. How did you fortify yourself, to make sure that you could withstand the emotional pressure and not have this happen again?
Once I got out of the hospital, I still went to therapy on as regular a basis as I could. It was harder when I was on the road. We could all use therapy. My God, right now everyone could use therapy. I’ve always had this sort of overdrive—“I’m doing theatre. This is what I want to do—I want to perform.” As long as I’m pursuing that in some way, then I feel O.K.
But there are lots of battles that I have lost. There’s the pressure of, once you do well, then everyone says, “You’ve got three Tonys, now show me,” or “Well, you didn’t get a Tony that time—a-ha!” And then the pressure I put on myself of wanting to evolve, continuing to choose things that challenge me and things that I know might cause me to fall flat on my face. The hard part for me was when I was being told I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t even do the one thing that I felt was in my bones. No one’s telling me that now, except, I guess, for the coronavirus.
The early part of your career, in the nineties, seems like this unstoppable rise, but I’m sure it wasn’t like that on the inside. You were completely unlike anyone else in terms of being a lyric soprano doing musicals, an African-American performer who didn’t have a big gospel voice or play “sassy,” all the things that you consciously avoided. Can you describe some of your early professional experiences, trying to break into this world?
I do want to say right off the bat that I’m not slamming people who are incredible gospel singers or great at playing sassy characters. That’s not me. We’re not a monolith. When I first started auditioning, I’d read Backstage and go in, and people would say things like, “Can you be a little more street?” or “Can you sass it up a little more?” I got that a lot in my cattle-call life.
And I did the cattle calls. People think I didn’t—I did. I ended up getting summer stock in Bucks County, in 1989. I remember even later, trying to audition for “Beauty and the Beast,” I couldn’t get cast as a spoon in the ensemble. I was devastated by that. Then, right after, I ended up auditioning for “Carousel.” I got that instead.
Funny, this is not your only story about having an issue with Disney. [In 1999, McDonald played Grace Farrell in an ABC television movie of “Annie,” and she said that the network asked the director, Rob Marshall, to shoot an alternate ending in which Daddy Warbucks does not propose marriage to her.]
Yes! They felt like they would lose part of their audience if Daddy Warbucks ended up proposing to Miss Grace, even though they had already cast me in the role. I mean, this was close to the end of our shooting schedule, so much of it was already in the can. All of a sudden, we have to reshoot because “we’re just not sure that this is going to fly in some of our Southern markets.” Aside from the fact that it was horrifying and embarrassing and infuriating for me, I look back on it and think, If I had the knowledge that I have now, would I have just quit? Because I have more of my voice than I did then. And I don’t know what the answer to that is, because Rob Marshall ended up being such an ally and blowing the reshoot so that they couldn’t use it. So I ended up staying in the room, and “Black Grace” ended up being someone absolutely worthy of Daddy Warbucks to propose to.
So much of your early career had to do with the idea of “color-blind casting,” or “nontraditional casting,” as you said in your Tony speech for “Carousel.” That was a very necessary step to open up the musical-theatre canon, but the conversation seems to have changed in the last ten years or so. I think of Daniel Fish’s production of “Oklahoma!,” which wasn’t just color-blind casting—it was a real reimagining of this canonical work by white authors. And of course there’s “Hamilton” as well. Has your own thinking evolved about so-called color-blind casting and the value of that versus other ways of opening up theatre?
Like, do I think that there is no longer any value in color-blind casting?
For instance, you mentioned “Streetcar.” The appeal wasn’t just playing Blanche DuBois but working with a Black director with a strong interpretation. It seems like a different conversation than the one people were having twenty-five years ago, when it was “can we have a Black Carrie Pipperidge?” There’s much more questioning of where these stories came from in the first place.
Yeah, and instead of just saying, “We’ve slipped them in, and, look at that, they’re doing just as well as a white person in that role,” it’s, like, “No, they’re in this role for a very specific reason,” to either blow the interpretation out in a completely different way or shine a light on who these characters are. The whole context of the play has to be in some ways reimagined, because you’re not saying, “Be blind to their color.” You’re saying, “Let their color now enhance how you see this entire story.”
It makes me think a lot about the production of “Porgy and Bess” that you were in eight or nine years ago, and how you and Diane Paulus and Suzan-Lori Parks were revising the original material. Which was controversial at the time, but now it seems, like, why wouldn’t women and people of color question this work by white men about Black people that was written eighty years ago?
Right. And obviously we know the controversy that that caused. We just wanted to make sure that they were, as Black people, as humanized as they could be. We were transforming as much of that narrative as we could. That’s not to say that the piece in and of itself isn’t brilliant. But you’re right—these are all white men writing about a Black experience. There were many, many, many conversations that went on in that creative room, with the cast as well.
Do you have an example of something being a really important choice for you?
Honestly, even the way that “Summertime” was sung. We didn’t want to say “mammy”; we wanted to say “mama.” Suzan-Lori Parks was just, like, “No, we’re going to make sure that we are as dignified and as human as possible telling this story, so they’re not just archetypes. Let’s make sure that we feel comfortable about what we’re doing up here.”
The biggest voice of criticism against this revision was, of course, Stephen Sondheim, who wrote a lengthy letter to the Times. Did you ever talk to him about it?
Nope. Steve has his opinions, and I have mine, and they’re different when it comes to “Porgy and Bess.” They’re incredibly different. And I think that my opinions are valid, and, in terms of my artistic experience and as a Black woman, I stand by everything I did with that production. So there’s no conversation to be had. Steve and I are still friends, but we’ve never discussed it.
Sticking on Sondheim for a moment, can I ask you about your Zoom rendition of “The Ladies Who Lunch” with Christine Baranski and Meryl Streep, for his ninetieth-birthday concert? How did the three of you put it together?
Christine and Meryl are friends, and Christine had the idea. We’d planned to take [Sondheim] out to dinner for his birthday, but here we were in quarantine, and this would be just a fun, silly way to give him a little birthday present and a giggle. And, as we started to hear this concert becoming bigger and bigger, we were, like, “What have we said yes to? Why is this turning into this big thing? Oh, no!” This was all just happening through phone calls and texts. We were sending each other little video snippets of what we were going to do, and that’s why I said, “Let’s all just Zoom together so we can see what it is.” And then from that bells went off.
I loved how you were all in bathrobes. Did you purposely want to make it look like you were having a breakdown in quarantine?
Yes! The whole point was: There’s nothing to do, so why even do your hair? At first, Christine was, like, “Let’s all do it in robes, so it’s like we’re at a spa” or something. And I was, like, that’ll work for Christine, because she’s so classy and beautiful, and Meryl is so elegant. No one’s going to believe that for me. So I said, “Can our hair be messy?” So what you end up seeing is lovely Christine in her robe, and then there’s Meryl being acerbic and fun but still looking beautiful. And then me, just broken down.
There’s a point where you look like you’re struggling to open your bottle of bourbon. Is that real?
No, of course, I made my acting choices. But I’ll tell you what, it was an actual bottle of bourbon. After a while, I was, like, I better slow down!
How do you generally feel about performing virtually?
I don’t love it, because I’m addicted to what I call the holy communion between the audience and the artist. But I understand the necessity of it, because we still need the arts. We need theatre. We need music. We need inspiration. We need catharsis. We need being in touch with our humanity.
It looks like live theatre is not going to be around for a while. You’re part of a theatre family. How worried are you about the time frame?
It’s very worrying. We’re luckier than other people in that we’ve been able to put some money away for a rainy day. But it’s hard. I worry about our friends. I worry about our industry. I know we’ll eventually be back. My gut tells me that, once people feel safe enough, people are going to rush back, because in some ways you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.
It’s interesting timing, though, with the shutdown and the conversation we were talking about earlier, about race. People have seen this pause as a real opportunity to think bigger.
Right. And to be meticulous and deliberate in the way we go back, the way we rebuild. This is the window. With Black Theatre United, one of our ideas is trying to get people more civically involved, to get involved in their local elections, to raise awareness about the census and voter suppression. If there is a silver lining to all this awfulness, it’s that we have the time to truly focus.
At the same time, you’re in the upcoming movie “Respect,” playing Barbara Franklin, Aretha’s mother. What about Barbara’s story resonated with you?
I understood Aretha better by learning about Barbara Franklin and her tragically short life. [Franklin died of a heart attack at thirty-four.] And her difficult breakup with Aretha’s father, and how it affected her children. Aretha’s father was the one who ended up getting custody, and that was devastating not only for Barbara but for Aretha, too. Her mother was a great singer, and she had a big, beautiful soprano sound—which made me understand why Aretha kept saying for a while, “Well, maybe Audra McDonald could play me.” I kept thinking, Why? Because I have such a soprano sound. But I think I understand now what her affinity for my voice was: it was probably similar to her mother’s.
Did you meet Aretha over the years?
I met her once. She came to “Porgy and Bess,” and she came backstage and was so lovely. She took the time to be with the entire cast and take pictures. She was very patient. And of course I grew up with her voice in my house. One summer at Juilliard, all I would listen to was Aretha Franklin, Take 6—they were a great a-cappella group of six Black men—and “Porgy and Bess,” the Glyndebourne production that Sir Simon Rattle conducted, with Cynthia Haymon as Bess. Those were the three things I listened to on repeat that entire summer. So Aretha was the soundtrack for my entire life.
I want to ask you about Zoe Caldwell, who died in February. She was your castmate in “Master Class,” of course, and your older daughter’s namesake. Can you describe your relationship with Zoe and why it was so important to you?
Our relationship started when Terrence McNally took me out to lunch to say, “There’s a part I think you should play. The great Zoe Caldwell is playing Maria Callas, and I think you two would really be wonderful together.” She was a very intense woman. None of it was affectation—it was who she was. You felt like her eyes were boring into your soul. I remember walking out of that audition thinking, Oh, my God, she’s a lot. And then just realizing this hurricane-force power was Zoe Caldwell. I was, like, I am going to learn from this woman. She was like a mother figure. She would say it like it is. There were many times that she would yell at me.
About what?
One time a very famous woman came to see our show, who I was a huge fan of, and she wasn’t particularly warm to me backstage. Her face kind of fell when I walked in the room. And I became this sort of shy, self-deprecating wimp in this superstar’s presence, and Zoe was there watching this whole thing happen. And the next night, as I was going up the stairs to my dressing room, she said, [speaks in a deep, imperious voice] “Audra, come here.” I thought, Shit, I’m in trouble. And she says, “You’re right. Such-and-such doesn’t like you. I could see that. But don’t dare give anybody your power the way you gave it to her last night.” And then she told me this story about how she would do that in front of John Houseman, because John Houseman didn’t like her. She said, “And I learned my lesson. If people don’t like me, that is fine. I don’t give them my power.” I was, like, “I’m sorry!”
So that night, Lauren Bacall came to see the show, and I was coming downstairs and could see her greeting Zoe. And Zoe said, “Audra, come here. This is the great Betty Bacall.” And I was myself: I had my presence and my power. And then the next night, when I came upstairs, Zoe said, “That’s how you do it.” I’ve never forgotten that. Never.
That is great. It’s also a tantalizing blind item about this woman. We’ve eliminated Lauren Bacall, but other than that it could be anyone.
[Laughs] I’ve since had lovely interactions with that particular person. It’s all good!
You’ve just had a big birthday. What did you do to celebrate turning fifty?
My family gave me the most magical day. I was allowed to sleep in, which was glorious, because with a three-year-old I usually only get about four or five hours at the most. Finally, I came downstairs, and they had made this incredible breakfast for me. They had drawn out a map, and I had to go on this treasure hunt throughout our property. They had, like, eight or nine presents for me—I had to go over here behind a bench and down here by the butterfly bushes. The only thing I had asked for was a lobster dinner, so they had ordered a lobster dinner for me. And my husband had contacted all my friends and family from as far back as second and third grade, and they had all sent in memories, and he had put them all in this incredible leather-bound book.
So I’m weeping, reading page after page, and then all of the sudden one of my friends called—it was Lonny Price. I was talking to him on FaceTime, and then my daughter, from upstairs, goes, “Mom! Mom! I need you for something!” I’m, like, “O.K., I’m sorry! I have to go!” I run upstairs to my daughter. She turns her computer around. Lonny, along with all of my other friends, were on a Zoom call waiting for me, and then they sang “Happy Birthday” and my husband brought in a cake. It was just an overwhelming, beautiful day. I don’t think I got out of my pajamas the whole time. That was exactly the way I wanted to turn fifty. And I feel O.K. The leadup is scary. But now it’s just, like, Oh, yeah, I’m fifty. I’ll just do what I want.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
If you look at Audra McDonald’s trajectory, it seems obvious that she was destined for greatness, but that doesn’t mean the path proved easy. Still, the singer and actress made Tony Award history as the first performer to sweep the awards in all four categories, and she was previously the youngest actor to win three Tony Awards. She is the first male or female performer to win a total of six competitive Tonys. She won two Grammy Awards, too, both in 2008 for Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny in the categories of “Best Opera Recording” and “Best Classical Album.” In 2015, she received the National Medal of Arts. As McDonald said in an interview with The Munro Review “I was taught you have to work really hard, but not to put any boundaries on yourself.”
She was born into a musical family, and her aunts toured as the McDonald Sisters gospel group in the 1970s. She acknowledged lessons learned during her childhood in Fresno, California, when she thanked the city’s Good Company Players “for raising me and telling me that I could be a performer.” Even then, people knew that McDonald would become a star. In an open letter to McDonald in The Munro Review, former Good Company Players staffer Armen Bacon wrote, “you were the one with a big, nuclear voice ... everyone knew you possessed the ‘X’ factor. Night after night, they echoed a ‘for-certain premonition,’ divine knowledge about your future.” In 2018, Fresno gave her a key to the city and named a street after her. She left home to attend Juilliard to study voice and entered what would be a dark period that later gave way to light — the year after she graduated Juilliard, she won her first Tony Award at the age of 24.
In a New Yorker profile, McDonald said, “I’ve always had this sort of overdrive — I’m doing theater. This is what I want to do — I want to perform.’ As long as I’m pursuing that in some way, then I feel OK”
The classically trained lyric soprano’s first solo album was released in 1998, and her opera debut was in Houston Grand Opera’s 2006 one-act production of La Voix Humaine. She went on to perform on TV in dozens of shows such as Private Practice and The Good Fight, television films including Annie, Wit, and A Raisin in the Sun, later reprising her role as Ruth Younger in the film version with a performance that earned her an Emmy nomination in 2008. McDonald has also appeared in numerous feature films over the years.
In 2020, she was set to play Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway, but then the pandemic struck. At the end of March 2020, she and husband Will Swenson contributed their duet of “Smile” in a one-night-only benefit for the Actors Fund to support entertainment industry members in need during the pandemic. In April 2020, she joined Meryl Streep and Christine Baranski for a virtual celebration of Stephen Sondheim’s 90th birthday in a performance called “The Ladies who Lunch,” which was part of a larger celebration that also raised money for ASTEP (Artists Striving to End Poverty).
Later in June 2020, along with fellow performers Billy Porter, Phylicia Rashad, and Wendell Pierce, McDonald co-founded Black Theater United, an organization with a mission to inspire reform and to combat systemic racism within the theater community and nationally. The organization is centered on the four pillars of awareness, accountability, advocacy, and action.
Choosing an Audra McDonald sampler is no easy matter. With six solo albums, a dozen or more cast recordings, and appearances on a score of other albums, it’s hard to know where to start, but here are some of our favorite McDonald performances available online.
“(When I Marry) Mister Snow” as Carrie Pipperidge in Carousel at the Lincoln Center Theater (1994)
During McDonald’s audition for the role of Carrie Pipperidge in Carousel, she fainted on-stage while singing, according to IMDB, but later clinched the role. The New York Times reported that “[w]hen the casting director heard her sing, he ran downstairs to get the theater’s resident composer, Michael John LaChiusa. Ms. McDonald sang again and the composer said that one day he would write a show for her.” (La Chiusa would go on to write the title role of Marie Christine for McDonald, one she performed on Broadway in late 1999 ino early 2000). She won her first Tony Award for her portrayal of Pipperidge in 1994 in Carousel” in the category of “Featured Actress in a Musical.” Choosing her for Carousel was described as colorblind casting, as the role up until then had primarily featured white performers — in her 1994 Tony Award acceptance speech, she thanked director, Nicholas Hytner “for trusting her” and for “nontraditional casting.” “(When I Marry) Mister Snow” gives a glimpse into the singer at the start of her career.
A Scene from Master Class with Audra McDonald and Zoe Caldwell
The Tony-Award winning play by Terrence McNally was inspired by a series of master classes Maria Callas gave at Juilliard. McDonald demonstrated her acting chops in the role of Sharon, and performed in Master Class from 1995 to 1997, alongside Zoe Caldwell (the namesake of McDonald’s oldest daughter) who played Callas. McDonald earned a Tony Award in the category of “Featured Actress in a Play” for her work. In this scene, Caldwell and McDonald engage in wicked repartee as they discuss the role of Lady Macbeth.
“Wheels of a Dream” from Ragtime, with Brian Stokes Mitchell at the Kennedy Center Jessye Norman Tribute (1997)
McDonald starred as Sarah in the original cast of Ragtime from 1998 to 2000. With music by Stephen Flaherty, lyrics by Lynn Ahrens, and a book by Terrence McNally, the musical is based on the 1975 novel by E.L. Doctorow, which depicts the hopes and dreams of several American families in turn-of-the-century America. McDonald inhabited the role of Sarah in this rousing duet, so full of hope that it makes the listener believe in a better day. She later went on to win a Tony Award for “Best Actress” for her portrayal of Sarah.
“It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” by Duke Ellington, Carnegie Hall’s 120th Anniversary in 2011
McDonald joined an all-star line-up to celebrate Carnegie Hall’s 120th anniversary in 2011. With conductor Alan Gilbert at the helm, McDonald’s performance marries musicality and drama.
“Summertime” from Porgy and Bess, performed on The Rosie Show
As Bess in the Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess in 2012, she garnered a Tony Award for “Best Leading Actress.” Her portrayal of the role on the musical album of the Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess earned her an Emmy nomination for “Best Musical Theater Album,” even as this re-imagining of the opera for the musical theater stage sparked ire from Sondheim and traditionalists.
“God Bless the Child” from Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill on “The View 22 (May 2014)
Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill chronicles the last few months before Billie Holiday’s premature demise. If you closed your eyes and could only listen in, the particular tonality of Holiday’s voice is resonant in McDonald’s depiction: She steps into the part completely. When she won the Tony Award for “Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play” for her performance, she broke the record for a performer winning the most Tonys. In her acceptance speech, she gave tribute to the women’s shoulders she was standing on — Lena Horne, Maya Angelou, Diahann Carroll, Ruby Dee, and Billie Holliday, of whom she said, “You deserved so much more than you were given on this planet. This is for you, Billie.”
McDonald as the host of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Live from Lincoln Center), PBS (2014)
In an ensemble cast, McDonald stands out. Listen in to her contribution to the quartet piece of “Johanna” from Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Live from Lincoln Center) on PBS, where she plays the beggar woman. With music by the New York Philharmonic, McDonald won an Emmy for Outstanding Special Class Program in 2015 for her role as the host.
“Climb Ev’ry Mountain” from The Sound of Music, at the Kennedy Center (February 2019)
Breathing fresh life into a beloved song, McDonald’s voice soars in “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” as she urges listeners to “follow every rainbow til you find your dream.”
https://www.arts.gov/honors/medals/audra-mcdonald
Audra McDonald
Photo by Cheriss May, Ndemay Media Group
Bio
For lighting up Broadway as one of its brightest stars. An unforgettable performer, she has won six Tony awards. In musicals, concerts, operas, and the recording studio, her rich, soulful voice continues to take her audiences to new heights
L.A. Opera's Mahagonny, Starring Audra McDonald and Patti LuPone, on PBS and DVD Beginning This Week
The production stars two members of Broadway royalty, both of whom were making their L.A. Opera debuts: Audra McDonald as Jenny, the enterprising whore who makes her way to the boomtown, and Patti LuPone as Leocadia Begbick, madam extraordinaire and Mahagonny's presiding spirit. Joining them are Anthony Dean Griffey as Jimmy McIntyre, Robert W‹rle as Fatty the Bookkeeper, John Easterlin as Jack O'Brien, Mel Ulrich as Bank Account Bill, Donnie Ray Albert as Trinity Moses, Derek Taylor as Toby Higgins and Steven Humes as Alaska Wolf Joe.
L.A. Opera music director James Conlon conducts, with stage direction by John Doyle, whose searing staging of Sweeney Todd won a Tony Award in 2006 and whose Broadway production of Sondheim's Company received plenty of acclaim, several Tony nominations and one Tony Award (for Best Revival of a Musical) earlier this year.
The L.A. Mahagonny airs on WNET-TV in New York on Monday, Dec. 17 at 9:00 p.m. and again at 12:30 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 21, while KCET-TV in Los Angeles presents the opera on Saturday, Dec. 22. Check your local PBS listings for the broadcast time in your area.
That same week, the production becomes available to home viewers in a new high-definition DVD release from EuroArts Music International. Online retailers such as Amazon.com are taking pre-orders for the holidays; the official release date is Tuesday, Dec. 18.
https://audramcdonald.com/bio/
Biography
Audra McDonald is unparalleled in the breadth and versatility of her artistry as both a singer and an actor. The winner of a record-breaking six Tony Awards, two Grammy Awards and an Emmy Award, in 2015 she was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people and received a National Medal of Arts—America’s highest honor for achievement in the field—from President Barack Obama. Blessed with a luminous soprano and an incomparable gift for dramatic truth-telling, she is as much at home on Broadway and the opera stage as in her film and television roles. Alongside her theatrical work, she maintains a major career as a concert and recording artist, regularly appearing at the world’s foremost venues.
Born into a musical family, McDonald grew up in Fresno, California, and received her classical vocal training at New York’s Juilliard School. A year after graduating, she won her first Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical for Carousel at Lincoln Center Theater (1994). Over the next four years, she received two additional Tony Awards in the featured actress category for her performances in the Broadway premieres of Terrence McNally’s Master Class (1996) and Ragtime (1998), making an unprecedented total of three Tony Awards before the age of 30. In 2004 she won her fourth Tony, starring alongside Sean “Diddy” Combs in A Raisin in the Sun, and in 2012 she won her fifth—and her first in the leading actress category—for her title role in The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess. In 2014 she made Broadway history and became the Tony Awards’ most decorated performer when she won her sixth award for her portrayal of Billie Holiday in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill—the role that also served as the vehicle for her Olivier Award-nominated 2017 debut in London’s West End. As well as setting the record for most competitive wins by an actor, she also became the first person to receive awards in all four acting categories. McDonald’s other theater credits include The Secret Garden (1993), Marie Christine (1999), Henry IV (2004), 110 in the Shade (2007), her Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park debut in Twelfth Night (2009), Shuffle Along, or, The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed (2016) and Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune (2019).
McDonald made her opera debut in 2006 at Houston Grand Opera, where she starred in a double bill: the monodrama La voix humaine by Francis Poulenc and the world premiere of Send by Michael John LaChiusa. She made her Los Angeles Opera debut in 2007 starring alongside Patti LuPone in John Doyle’s production of Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. The resulting recording won McDonald two Grammy Awards, for Best Opera Recording and Best Classical Album.
On the concert stage, McDonald has premiered music by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Adams and sung with virtually every major American orchestra—including the Boston Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra and San Francisco Symphony—under such conductors as Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Sir Simon Rattle and Esa-Pekka Salonen. She made her Carnegie Hall debut in 1998 with the San Francisco Symphony under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas in a season-opening concert that was broadcast live on PBS. Internationally, she has sung at London’s BBC Proms (where she was only the second American in more than 100 years invited to appear as a guest soloist at the Last Night of the Proms) and at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, as well as with the London Symphony Orchestra and Berlin Philharmonic.
It was the Peabody Award-winning CBS program Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years that first introduced McDonald to television audiences as a dramatic actor. She went on to co-star with Kathy Bates and Victor Garber in the lauded 1999 Disney/ABC television remake of Annie, and in 2000 she had a recurring role on NBC’s hit series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. After receiving her first Emmy nomination for her performance in the HBO film version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Wit, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Emma Thompson, McDonald returned to network television in 2003 in the political drama Mister Sterling, produced by Emmy Award-winner Lawrence O’Donnell, Jr. (The West Wing) and starring Josh Brolin. In early 2006 she joined the cast of the WB’s The Bedford Diaries, and over the next season she had a recurring role on NBC’s television series Kidnapped. In 2008 she reprised her Tony-winning role in A Raisin in the Sun, in a made-for-television movie adaption that earned her a second Emmy Award nomination. From 2007 to 2011, she played Dr. Naomi Bennett on the hit ABC medical drama Private Practice. In 2013, her critically acclaimed performance as the Mother Abbess in NBC’s live telecast of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music, opposite Carrie Underwood as Maria, was watched by an estimated 18.5 million people across America. McDonald received a fourth Emmy nomination for her role in HBO’s film special of Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill in 2016. Having first appeared as U.S. attorney Liz Lawrence on CBS’s legal drama The Good Wife in 2009, in 2018 she joined the cast as a season regular of The Good Fight, now available on Paramount+. McDonald stars alongside Taylor Schilling and Steven Pasquale in The Bite, a six-episode pandemic-themed drama co-produced by Spectrum Originals and CBS Studio
McDonald also makes regular television appearances as a performer, host, and talk-show guest. A familiar face on PBS, she has headlined telecasts including an American Songbook season-opening concert, a presentation of Sondheim’s Passion, a Rodgers and Hammerstein tribute concert titled Something Wonderful, and five galas with the New York Philharmonic: a New Year’s Eve performance in 2006, a concert celebrating Sondheim’s 80th birthday, Carnegie Hall’s 120th anniversary concert, One Singular Sensation! Celebrating Marvin Hamlisch, and, most recently, Sweeney Todd. She was also featured in the PBS television specials A Broadway Celebration: In Performance at the White House and A Celebration of American Creativity, singing at the request of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. McDonald has appeared three times on the Kennedy Center Honors; been profiled by 60 Minutes, Today, PBS NewsHour, and CBS Sunday Morning; guest co-hosted The View with Barbara Walters; and been a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and David Letterman; The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon; Late Night with Jimmy Fallon; The Late, Late Show with James Corden; The Colbert Report; CBS This Morning; Live with Kelly and Ryan, NewsNation with Tamron Hall; PoliticsNation with Al Sharpton; Iron Chef America; The Megan Mullally Show; The Rosie O’Donnell Show; RuPaul’s Drag Race; The Tavis Smiley Show; The Talk; The Wendy Williams Show; and The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore. In 2012, McDonald was named the new official host of the PBS series Live From Lincoln Center, and she won her first Primetime Emmy Award for hosting the Creative Arts Special Program in 2015, having previously been nominated in 2013. She has also performed on numerous Tony Awards telecasts; in 2013, she closed the show by performing a rap duet with Neil Patrick Harris
McDonald launched her film career with Seven Servants in 1996; her list of credits has since grown to include The Object of My Affection (1998), Cradle Will Rock (1999), It Runs in the Family (2003), The Best Thief in the World (2004), She Got Problems (2009)—a mockumentary movie musical written, starring, and directed by her sister, Alison McDonald—and Rampart (2012). She recently appeared opposite Meryl Streep in Ricki and the Flash (2015), in the movie-musical Hello Again (2017), and—as Madame de Garderobe—in Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast (2017).As a recording artist, McDonald has enjoyed a long relationship with the Nonesuch label, interpreting songs from the classic (Gershwin, Arlen, and Bernstein) to the contemporary (Michael John LaChiusa, Adam Guettel, and Ricky Ian Gordon). The New York Times named her first Nonesuch album, 1998’s Way Back to Paradise, as Adult Record of the Year. Following the bestselling How Glory Goes in 2000 and Happy Songs in 2002, she released the 2006 album Build a Bridge, stretching her repertoire to include songs by the likes of Randy Newman, Elvis Costello/Burt Bacharach, Rufus Wainwright, and Nellie McKay. Sing Happy, recorded live with the New York Philharmonic, was released in 2018 by Decca Gold, marking McDonald’s first solo recording with full orchestra. Her ensemble recordings include the acclaimed EMI version of Bernstein’s Wonderful Town conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, the New York Philharmonic release of Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, and Dreamgirls in concert, as well as the first recording of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Allegro and Broadway cast albums of Carousel, Ragtime, Marie Christine, 110 in the Shade, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, and Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill. She is also featured on a number of audiovisual recordings available on DVD and Blu-ray, including Sondheim! The Birthday Concert; Christmas with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square; Weill—Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny; Bernstein—Wonderful Town; Audra McDonald: Live at the Donmar, London; and My Favorite Broadway: The Leading Ladies.
McDonald’s other theater accolades include five Drama Desk Awards, five Outer Critics Circle Awards, an Ovation Award, a Theatre World Award, Roundabout Theatre’s Jason Robards Award for Excellence in Theatre, a Rockefeller Award for Creativity, and the Drama League’s 2012 Distinguished Performance and 2000 Distinguished Achievement in Musical Theatre Awards. Besides her six Tony wins, she received nominations for her performances in Marie Christine and 110 in the Shade, five NAACP Image Awards nominations, and an Olivier Award nomination from her West End debut in Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill.
As one of today’s key cultural figures, McDonald was inducted into Lincoln Center’s Hall of Fame as a member of its inaugural class, which included Louis Armstrong, Plácido Domingo, Yo-Yo Ma, Leontyne Price, and Harold Prince, and named Musical America’s “Musician of the Year,” a title previously bestowed on such luminaries as Leonard Bernstein and Beverly Sills. She has been honored by two of America’s leading academic institutions, receiving the prestigious 2018 Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT, and an honorary doctorate from Yale University.
In addition to her professional obligations, McDonald is a passionate advocate for equal rights, LGBTQ causes, and underprivileged youth. Her outspoken activism for marriage equality helped put the issue on the national agenda. In 2009, she joined Twitter to promote the cause, using the Twitter handle @AudraEqualityMc, and in 2011 she joined pro-equality marchers in Albany to lobby New York state senators in the days leading up their groundbreaking vote for legalization. In 2012, she and her now husband, actor Will Swenson, received PFLAG National’s Straight for Equality Award. McDonald was featured in marriage equality and anti-bullying campaigns for Freedom to Marry, NOH8, and PFLAG NYC. The Human Rights Campaign, America’s largest civil rights organization for LGBTQ equality, recognized her work with its 2009 Ally for Equality and 2018 National Equality Awards.
As a member of the Covenant House International Board of Directors, which oversees programs for homeless young people in 27 cities in six countries across the United States, Canada, and Latin America, McDonald actively devotes her time and talents to spreading awareness about at-risk youth. For her ongoing contribution to the cause, she was honored in 2017 alongside Chelsea Clinton, Gayle King, and Blake Lively as one of Variety magazine’s “Power of Women” and received Covenant House’s Beacon of Hope Award the following year.
A dog lover, McDonald adopted her canine companion, Butler, from Eleventh Hour Rescue, a volunteer-based, non-profit organization that saves dogs from death row. Of all her many roles, her favorites are the ones performed offstage: passionate advocate for equal rights and homeless youth, wife to actor Will Swenson, and mother.
The Verdict: Critics Review Audra McDonald in Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill
Directed by Tony Award nominee Lonny Price (110 in the Shade, Sweeney Todd, Company), Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill began previews March 25. The Broadway production is a limited, 10-week engagement.
The 1959-set play, which centers on one of Holiday's final public appearances, takes place in Philadelphia four months before the singer's death. The 90-minute show includes such songs as "God Bless the Child," "Strange Fruit," "What a Little Moonlight Can Do," "When a Woman Loves a Man," "Foolin' Myself," "Don't Explain," "Somebody's On My Mind," "Taint Nobody's Bizness," "Baby Doll" and more. A cast album is planned.
McDonald is joined by Shelton Becton as pianist Jimmy Powers. The musical team also includes bassist George Farmer and drummer Clayton Craddock. Michael Keller is the music coordinator.
The critics have filed their reviews and Playbill.com has collected them for our readers. Playbill.com will continue to update our list as the reviews come in.
https://www.goldstar.com/artists/audra-mcdonald-tickets/reviews
https://www.schmopera.com/audra-mcdonald-and-the-art-of-perfection/
Audra McDonald and the Art of Perfection
Review
The LA Opera stage has seen its share of sopranos and mezzos who have deservedly earned the description of “diva.” What they all have in common is the fact that they’ve conquered the world of opera. A soprano who has conquered Broadway is another kind of diva. And then there’s Audra McDonald - who is simply one-of-a-kind.
Eleven years ago Ms. McDonald was performing here in Kurt Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. At the time, she was a four-time Tony winner. She just returned to LA Opera with two more Tonys but for “one night only” - actually one day only; a matinee concert of almost exclusively show tunes, backed up by no less than the LA Opera Orchestra.
The program was almost two hours long with no intermission and not even an orchestral interlude where she went offstage for a break. The show was all Audra and her perfect voice, which borders on “superhuman” - she didn’t even stop to take a sip of water. Ms. McDonald is also a consummate actress. She has won Tony Awards in all four acting categories (for straight plays and musicals) - the only actress in history who can make that claim. So we were in for a real “performance” of each song, not just an invitation to enjoy her flawless, platinum pipes. So heartfelt were her renditions, that often her eyes would be filled with tears, glittering as brightly as the golden glitter on her dress.
In La Cage aux Folles, the fiery Jerry Herman song “I Am What I Am” was written for the climax of Act I, before intermission. But Ms. McDonald chose this as her opening number, letting us know right away we were in for an afternoon of a voice filled with power and passion, not to mention an afternoon of ovations.
There were a few shout-outs from the crowd, as the Broadway-savvy audience tried to stay ahead of her as she introduced each song. But she was ready, and tricked her fans into some wrong answers. She joked that she was starting to grade the audience as if on a test. “You’re doing well - about 65% so far,” she said, as they incorrectly identified Lerner & Lane as “Lerner and Lowe,” and incorrectly identified the wrong “Barbara” in On A Clear Day… (Barbara Harris vs. Barbra Streisand.) All this as a charming set-up for “Hurry, It’s Lovely Up Here,” from that very same show.
She let us know that she considers herself “a champion of new composers.” “That way,” she told us, maybe only half-joking, “I’ll still have a job in the future.” She reminded us that Jason Robert Brown was once a “new composer” and proffered his “Stars and Moon” which has become one of her signature songs. She has sung this countless times over the last two decades, but she conveyed the meaning and importance of every lyric as if she was singing it for the very first time. And so it was with everything she did.
In spite of an unparalleled career of great roles and accolades, Ms. McDonald has an endearing, self-effacing personality on the concert stage. She only played the “diva card” once and it was all in fun. She said “Sounds like some of you want to sing along. But it’s my concert.” Laughing at herself, she had to ask music director Andy Einhorn “what’s next?” a couple of times. (By the way, we didn’t even know - the list of songs was not in the program, and so it was a day of extremely pleasant surprises.) She also mocked herself when she forgot the opening lyrics to Stars and Moon, something she’s performed for twenty years. Later, she humbly told us of her embarrassment at forgetting the lyrics to a Stephen Sondheim song at a Stephen Sondheim concert. “If you go up during a Stephen Sondheim song, you’re dead. You can’t make up something that will fit,” she reminded us. But the reason for her Sondheim mistake was hilarious. There were two giant monitors facing the stage during that concert and she was distracted by the gigantic double image of herself. “Only Beyonce can get away with something like that. All I could think was, ‘my mouth is too big.’”
She tells us that she has never forgotten that she was once a “valley girl” from Fresno (“Fres-yes” she says to anyone who might be incredulous.) At the age of thirteen she won a high school singing contest in Reno performing “Cornet Man” from Funny Girl. She remembers the judge remarking, “You’re thirteen - you have no idea what you’re singing about,” and then she got a big laugh as she launched into the opening lyrics:
“I just put the kids to sleep
And swept the shack…”
Ms. McDonald used a microphone for the entire program with one exception: when it was “opera time” a.k.a. “Summertime.” She didn’t need “no stinking microphone” to fill every corner of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion with glorious Gershwin.
She sang “I Could Have Danced All Night,” from My Fair Lady, a song she was reluctant to sing for many years because “everyone has done it.” But then she quipped that you have to sing that song to finally “earn your soprano card.”
In a tribute to another soprano, her mentor the late great Barbara Cook, Ms. McDonald sang “Chain of Love” from The Grass Harp and “Ice Cream” from She Loves Me, two shows that starred Ms. Cook. “She taught me everything I know about song interpretation and concertizing,” she told us. “Being Good” from Hallelujah, Baby! served as a tribute not only to Leslie Uggams (who introduced the song) but also to Lena Horne, Billie Holiday, and other legends. “I’m standing on their shoulders. I wouldn’t be standing here singing to you if they hadn’t broken down the barriers,” she said.
It’s always a thrill when an artist creates a medley of songs that have never been tied together but sound like they were meant for each other. “Never Will I Marry” from Greenwillow and “Being Alive” from Company were blended beautifully to convey the angst of two characters who were “in the same place in their lives.” Ms. McDonald also combined “Children Will Listen” from Into The Woods and “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught” from South Pacific to remind us all that the next generation is the result of the harm or love from their parents.
As the parent of a 19-month old toddler - and three teenagers - she revealed her personal challenges. Her youngest is evidently quite a handful - as if she came out of the womb singing “And I am telling you…” from Dreamgirls. She jokes that she and her husband are putting money away in three college tuition savings accounts “and one for bail.” A startling revelation is that her children didn’t want her to sing to them - not even lullabies. One of her children complained, “you make my ears cry.”
But she clearly loves motherhood as her children continue to teach her “what matters most.” And with that in mind, Ms. McDonald ended the program with her personal philosophy reflected in the lyrics of “Make Someone Happy” from Do-Re-Mi:
“Fame if you win it,
Comes and goes in a minute.
Where’s the real stuff in life to cling to?
Love is the answer.”
And then, in light of 9⁄11 and all the tragedies that have followed, she chose to end the evening with a song of hope: “Climb Every Mountain” from The Sound of Music.
Her encore was a continuation of that theme, with a prayer for us to live in a better world somewhere “Over the Rainbow” (from The Wizard of Oz.)
We left the theatre with another hope - that it won’t be another eleven years before the diva returns.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/01/theater/ohio-state-murders-broadway.html
Audra McDonald to Star in ‘Ohio State Murders’ on Broadway
The production brings the world of the playwright Adrienne Kennedy, 90, to Broadway for the first time.
The actress Audra McDonald has agreed to star in a Broadway production of “Ohio State Murders,” bringing the work of the eminent experimental playwright Adrienne Kennedy to the nation’s most prominent stage for the first time.
The play, first staged in 1992 at the Great Lakes Theater Festival in Cleveland, is about a Black writer who returns to her alma mater, Ohio State University, to talk about violence in her work. Set in the 1950s, the play is a compact exploration of the destructive power of racism, with six roles and a usual running time of 75 minutes.
Kennedy, 90, is both acclaimed (in 2008 she was honored for lifetime achievement at the Obie Awards) and also unfamiliar to the general public; the New York Times critic Maya Phillips wrote this year that Kennedy “is often shelved among the ranks of the ‘celebrated’ and the ‘influential’ who are rarely produced.”
The Broadway production is to be directed by Kenny Leon, and produced by Jeffrey Richards, Rebecca Gold, Jayne Baron Sherman and Irene Gandy. On Monday, Richards announced that the production is in development, but did not specify the timing.
Earlier this year, McDonald and Leon collaborated on a streamed reading of “Ohio State Murders.” The play had an Off Broadway production, with a different cast and creative team, in 2007, presented by Theater for a New Audience.
McDonald, with six Tony Awards, has won more competitive Tony Awards than any other performer in history. She last appeared on Broadway in a 2019 revival of “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune.”
One of McDonald’s Tony Awards was for her performance in a 2004 revival of “A Raisin in the Sun,” which Leon directed. Leon then won his own Tony Award in 2014, when he directed another revival of “A Raisin in the Sun.”
THE
MUSIC OF AUDRA MCDONALD: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF
RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS
WITH AUDRA MCDONALD:
Live with Carnegie Hall: Audra McDonald
Audra McDonald's Unforgettable Voice on the Number One
"Maybe This Time," (Cabaret), Audra McDonald
2014 Tony Awards Show Clip: Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill
Audra McDonald Live at the Donmar
Audra McDonald performs “Before the Parade Passes By” on Live with Carnegie Hall
Audra McDonald: "There Won't Be Trumpets" (Anyone Can Whistle)
Audra McDonald--1999 TV Concert, Keith Lockhart
2017 PEN America Literary Gala: Audra McDonald sings "The Glamorous Life," by Stephen Sondheim
Stage Right - Episode 6: Audra McDonald
"Maybe This Time," (Cabaret), Audra McDonald
